It's time Rahul Gandhi stopped playing the leader; this is the biggest service he can do for his party

After its defeat in this year's Lok Sabha elections, the Congress is battered by dissent and internal squabbles.

Party president Sonia Gandhi, the glue that holds India's Grand Old Party together, is silent, perhaps unable to come to grips with the magnitude of defeat. On Monday, two serving ministers of its state governments in Maharashtra and Assam quit, arguing that the party could not accommodate their ambitions. Unsurprisingly, both Narayan Rane of Maharashtra, which is up for polls later this year, and Himanta Biswa Sarma of Assam, have the same ambition: to be appointed chief minister of their respective states. Both feel that chief ministers Prithviraj Chavan and Tarun Gogoi are not up to the task.

But the party high command, as the Sonia-Rahul Gandhi combine is collectively called, seems to be in no mood to dislodge sitting chief ministers. That might be the correct thing to do, but there is a way to solve this problem of dissension. The party should conduct a secret ballot among all MLAs and ask each to name their chief ministerial choice. Whoever wins this should get the job, as was done in Karnataka. But the problems of the party are greater than ambitious satraps jostling for leadership in states.

The Congress is paralysed by the two contrasting ways in which Sonia and Rahul operate.

While Sonia favours an open, consultative style, Rahul leads a band of youngish, number-crunching whizz-kids with little understanding of electoral politics. Unlike his mother, Rahul is inaccessible to most party colleagues, diffident in Parliament and underwhelming as a leader of election campaigns. His half-hearted attempts to democratise the youth wing of the party has ended up demoralising it. And his prolonged disappearances suggest that he does not care much for the everyday bustle of an active political life. Rahul, a reluctant politician, has created a leadership vacuum. Sonia must step into this decisively.

Rahul can go back to nurturing his constituency, or whatever else catches his fancy — so long as it is not imitating an albatross around the Congress' neck.